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AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

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Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#201

Post by bentt »

hoppp wrote: post #150
bentt wrote: post #60

The best code I've written with an LLM has been where I architect it, I guide the LLM through the scaffolding and initial proofs of different components, and then I guide it through adding features. Along the way it makes mistakes and I guide it through fixing them. Then when it is slow, I profile and guide it through optimizations. So in the end, it's code that I know very, very well. I could have written it but it…

Sounds like its faster to just write the code by hand

Once you get a sense for LLM workflow, sometimes the task is not appropriate for it and you do write by hand. In fact, most code I write is by hand.

But if I want a new system and the specs are clear, it can be built up in stages that are testable, and there are bits that would take some research but are well documented… then it can be a win.

The studies that say devs are slower with LLMs is fair because on average, devs don’t know how to optimize for them. Some do though.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#202

Post by smsm42 »

fsloth wrote: post #141
nicce wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself. Even if you do it by yourself, you need to do the same thinking and iterative process by yourself. You just get the code almost instantly and mostly correctly, if you are good at defining the initial specification.

This. You _have_ to write the spec. The result is that instead of spending X units of time on spec and THEN y units of time on coding, you get the whole thing in x units of time AND you have a spec. The trick is knowning where the particular LLM sucks. I expect in a short amount of time there is no productivity gain but when you start to understand the limitations and strengths - holey moley.

Unless you realize no LLM is good at what you need and you just wasted weeks of time walking in circles.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#203

Post by bentt »

notarobot123 wrote: post #75
mattmanser wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it have actually taken you 3x longer? I am surprising myself these days with how fast I'm being using AI as a glorified Stack Overflow. We are also having studies and posts come out that when actually tried side-by-side, the AI writes the coding route is slower, though the developer percieves it as faster.

I am not the biggest fan of LLMs but I have to admit that, as long as you understand what the technology is and how it works, it is a very powerful tool. I think the mixed reports on utility have a lot to do with the very different ways the tool is used and how much 'magic' the end-user expects versus how much the end-user expects to guide the tool to do the work. To get the best out of it, you do have to provide sig…

yeah very few months I try to have it “just do magic” again and I re-learn the lesson. Like, I’ll just say “optimize this shader!” and plug it in blind.

It doesn’t work. The only way it could is if the LLM has a testing loop itself. I guess in web world it could, but in my world of game dev, not so much.

So I stick with the method I outlined in OP and it is sometimes useful.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#205

Post by vlovich123 »

peteforde wrote: post #198
Hendrikto wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could have written it but it would have taken me about 3x longer when all is said and done. Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself. Wasn’t there a study that said that using LLMs makes people feel more productive while they actually are not?

I am so tired of this style of "don't believe your lying eyes" conjecture. I'm a career coder and I used LLMs primarily to rapidly produce code for domains that I don't have deep experience in. Instead of spending days or weeks getting up to speed on an SDK I might need once, I have a pair programmer that doesn't check their phone or need to pick up their kids at 4:30pm. If you don't want to use LLMs, nobody is forci…

Correct. In areas you yourself are a junior engineer, you’ll be more effective with an LLM at tackling that area maybe. It’s also surprisingly effective at executing refactors.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#207

Post by rglover »

This is a good thing. That shift in expectations will hopefully prevent a total collapse of systems as inexperienced developers would have yeeted god knows what code into production.

The best part: all of the materials that were available to now-seniors are available to new juniors. The added advantage of having an LLM to explain or clarify things? Seniors didn't have that. We had to suffer.

Sorry, but the outcome is fair. Seniors had to suffer to learn and can now benefit from the speed up of AI. Juniors don't have to suffer to learn, but they do have to learn to leverage AI to help them catch up to the existing crop of seniors.

Not impossible. Not impractical. Just a different form of hard work, which, no matter how much anyone kicks and screams will always be the thing standing in the way of where you want to be.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#208

Post by victorbjorklund »

fluidcruft wrote: post #182
Hendrikto wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could have written it but it would have taken me about 3x longer when all is said and done. Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself. Wasn’t there a study that said that using LLMs makes people feel more productive while they actually are not?

True but the n00b is very fast. A lot of coaching is waiting for the n00b to perform tasks and meta things about motivation. These LLM are extremely fast and eager to work. I don't need a study to tell me that five projects that have been stuck in slow plodding along waiting for me to ever have time or resources for nearly ten years. But these are now nearing completion after only two months of picking up Claude Code…

100% this. The AI missunderstands and make a mistake? No problem. Clarify and the AI will come back with a rewrite in 30 sec.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#209

Post by victorbjorklund »

dingnuts wrote: post #196
fluidcruft wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but the n00b is very fast. A lot of coaching is waiting for the n00b to perform tasks and meta things about motivation. These LLM are extremely fast and eager to work. I don't need a study to tell me that five projects that have been stuck in slow plodding along waiting for me to ever have time or resources for nearly ten years. But these are now nearing completion after only two months of picking up Claude Code…

LLMs might make you feel faster (which helps with motivation!) and help with some of the very easy stuff but the critical part of your anecdote is that you haven't actually completed the extra work. The projects are only "NEARING" completion. I think that's very telling.

If the easy things are done faster you xan spend more time on the hard stuff. No need to spend 2 hours on making the UI for the MVP when an AI can make a decent UI in 2 min. Means you have 2 hours more to spend on the hard stuff.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#210

Post by fluidcruft »

dingnuts wrote: post #196
fluidcruft wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but the n00b is very fast. A lot of coaching is waiting for the n00b to perform tasks and meta things about motivation. These LLM are extremely fast and eager to work. I don't need a study to tell me that five projects that have been stuck in slow plodding along waiting for me to ever have time or resources for nearly ten years. But these are now nearing completion after only two months of picking up Claude Code…

LLMs might make you feel faster (which helps with motivation!) and help with some of the very easy stuff but the critical part of your anecdote is that you haven't actually completed the extra work. The projects are only "NEARING" completion. I think that's very telling.

Congratulations! You repeated my joke? lol

But in all seriousness, completion is not the only metric of productivity. I could easily break it down into a mountain of subtasks that have been fully completed for the bean counters. In the meantime, the code that did not exist 2 months ago does exist.

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